Weekly Update - Layer 1 & Layer 2 News (Week 46, 16/11/2021 - 22/11/2021)

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele reveals plans for $1B BTC bond issue, Bitcoin City.

‘Key Takeaways

• El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced plans to issue $1B in Bitcoin (BTC) bonds, through Blockstream’s Liquid sidechain. He also said that the bond’s proceeds will be used to build Bitcoin City, a new city based around Bitcoin with no tax beyond VAT.

• Avalanche (AVAX) hit a new ATH of $144.96 after being listed on Binance.US, in addition to the recent announcement of a partnership between Ava Labs and Deloitte for the latter’s use of the Avalanche blockchain.

• Crypto.com added Polygon (MATIC) support for Ethereum (ETH) deposits and withdrawals. At the time of writing, Cronos has processed 2.39M transactions, logged 85,499 unique wallet addresses, and is ranked #17 in terms of chain TVL on DeFi Llama.

• Binance has integrated Arbitrum One, allowing its users to directly deposit funds through Arbitrum One without using the Arbitrum Bridge. Withdrawals via Arbitrum One are due to be implemented in the future.

Highlights

• El Salvador to inaugurate Bitcoin City backed by $1B Bitcoin bonds

• El Salvador to Issue $1B in Tokenized Bonds on the Liquid Network

• Avalanche ($AVAX) Hits $120 Helped by Getting Listed on Binance.US, Up 3576% YTD

• Big Four Accounting Firm Deloitte Forges Partnership With Ava Labs to Leverage Avalanche Blockchain

• Crypto.com adds Polygon support for Ethereum deposits and withdrawals

• Binance integrates Ethereum Layer 2 network Arbitrum One

• Square Releases White Paper for Decentralized Bitcoin Exchange

• Acala wins first Polkadot parachain auction with over 32M DOT staked

• New zkSync sidechain brings privacy and decentralization at a few cents to Ethereum users

• Blockchain Firm StarkWare Raises $50M Series C Round at a $2B Valuation

• Blockchain.com set to unlock ZK-rollup scalability for a billion users

• Crypto lender Celsius increases Bitcoin mining investment to $500 million

• NFL Turns to Polygon Network for Ticket Collectible NFTs

* % change is based on the difference between two subsequent bi-weekly periods

† X-Chain total transactions plus C-Chain total transactions

 ‘-’ denotes missing, unavailable or incomplete data

Sources: Coingecko, Etherscan,Ethernodes, Terra Station, Terra Etherscan, Avascan, Solana Beach, FTMscan, BSCscan,Cronos Explorer, DeFi Llama

* Figure refers to Lightning nodes with active channels

† Ronin is the sidechain developed by Sky Mavis for Axie Infinity

 ‘-’ denotes missing, unavailable or incomplete data

Sources:  DeFi Llama, Polyscan, Clark Moody Bitcoin, 1ML, Ronin Explorer, Coingecko, Optimistic Etherscan, Arbiscan